United Methodism’s Human Rights Hat-Trick of Early 2015

I have often been critical about very systemic problems with the way in which my denominational leaders have typically chosen to approach global human rights advocacy.

So it is worth highlighting and celebrating instances when positive steps are taken in a corrective direction.

Three such pleasant surprises came last month.

The United Methodist Church’s Board of Pension and Health Benefits has long been under intense pressure from anti-Israel activists – which at times borders on outright anti-Semitism – to single out the world’s lone Jewish state for punitive divestment efforts. At a church conference last year, activists pushing divestment from three targeted companies for their business with Israel (Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola) basically admitted that this was part of their wider agenda of Boycotts, Sanctions, and Divestment (BDS), or in one conference speaker’s own words, “boycotting all things Israeli.”

However, in January, the Board announced the implementation of new ethical guidelines for decision-making about investments and divestments with the $21 billion in assets it manages, according to concerns about human rights abuses. But rather than singling out Israel, these guidelines will be applied in a globally and morally consistent way.

United Methodist News Service explained that the Board’s new guidelines may lead to divestments from companies doing a large amount of business with countries that are among the world’s most egregious human rights abusers, using Freedom House’s annual “worst of the worst” list. Unsurprisingly, most of the countries that this well-respected human rights advocacy organization found, relatively speaking, to be the worst abusers were Communist or Islamic nations. While no less prominent liberals than Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were among its leading early supporters, unlike more ideologically leftist human rights groups, Freedom House has stayed away from treating elective abortion or same-sex marriage as “human rights.”

Also, according to UMNS, a senior Board official expected that these “new rules are highly unlikely to lead to the exclusion of Motorola, Hewlett-Packard or Caterpillar.”